Nobody's Fool Y'all

34

 "Hadley! Hadley!" Lou Edna called from across the room.

Hadley had dozed off. The novel she'd been reading was about as about as interesting as watching pine trees shed their needles.

"Huh?" Hadley said.

She licked her dry lips. Her jaw had sagged open. From the dried drool on the side of her face, she knew she'd been snoozing for a while.

"Hope I don't get a cold sore from this slime," she muttered.

"You gotta' see this, girlfriend," Lou Edna said. "I'm not spitting beans. Really. Look at this!"

Lou Edna turned the screen toward Hadley. Abandoning her novel, she crossed the room to where Lou Edna sat at a small table with two chairs.

"What have you been doing while I was gathering dust over there on the sofa?" Hadley asked.

"I've been researching," Lou Edna said.

"I told you, Lou, no naughty stuff."

"Will you get your mind out of the gutter? For once, believe it or not, mine's not there. I've been looking up those old stories about this place. The gangsters. The missing woman. And guess what?" Lou Edna said.

"They're all just a bunch of hogwash," said Hadley. "Urban legends tweaked to fit our neck of the woods."

"Hogwash! My uncle's carbuncles!" said Lou Edna. "You couldn't be more wrong. Look at this. It's from some website called: Lock-Stock-&-Crock."

"Just how dependable do you think the information you garner from some site with a name like that is going to be?" asked Hadley. "You still think pro wrestling is the real deal."

"It is," said Lou Edna. "And I'm not going to argue the finer points of the sport with you, Hadley Jane. You have a closed mind about wrestling. And so do I. We'll just agree to disagree. You're not the only intelligent brainiac I hang out with. Just ask Bucky Jim Whittle. He's as smart as a whip, and he thinks wrestling's real, too."

"Um-hum."

"Seriously, girl. 'Where is Kate Shearling?' That's the title of this thing."

"Who is Kate Shearling?"

"She's been missing since the 20s. From here! From right here! The case is still open."

Lou Edna showed Hadley a photograph of a young girl with a dark-haired fellow. The picture was old and grainy, but the couple looked happy.

"She's the gal who visited this place way back then and was never seen again."

"The lost girl of Kyrk's Ridge?" asked Hadley.

"Uh-huh, that's the one."

"So, her name is Kate Shearling. Pretty name. Well, I guess you learn something new every day," said Hadley.

"But listen to this, Hadley. This is like a love story and a tragic mystery all in one. But it's good. Maybe even better than Bonnie and Clyde."

"How so?" said Hadley, looking at the faded photograph again on the iPad.

Shame the resolution wasn't better. The girl in the photo was quite pretty. Impossible to tell, but she guessed her hair was dark brown. Or maybe black. She had light eyes, though. Maybe blue or green.

"Says here that back in the 20s, Kate took up with a bank robber. Let's see. His name was Melrick Andersen. Melrick. They sure did name babies funny names back then."

"Ah, Lou Edna," Hadley said, "isn't your middle name Trixiebelle?"

"You know it is," she said. "Nothing unusual about that. I got four Trixiebelles that are close kin."

"Close kin as in kissin' cousins?" Hadley asked.

"Don't bring that up," Lou Edna said. "Just because I got a daddy and mama who married brothers and sisters and you don't, don't make me weird. You're just jealous 'cause you ain't got no double-first cousins hangin' from your family's tree limbs."

Hadley pictured nooses and mealy-mouthed kin.

"That must be it," Hadley said. "Anyway, what about Merrick and Kate?"

"M-e-l-rick and Kate," said Lou Edna. "Star-crossed lovers. It's the saddest thing I think I ever read. He robs a bank. Gets away with a lotta loot. He was probably a real stinker, but he had a soft spot for Kate. He steals from a bank but then goes out and buys a lot of presents with some of the stolen money. Huh! Buys! Not steals! If that don't beat all."

"There's no explaining human behavior," said Hadley

"Anyway," Lou Edna went on, "he goes back to where his girlfriend, Kate, is, and what does he do?"

"I don't know," said Hadley.

"This is the romantic part," said Lou Edna. "He showers her with presents. Then, he goes and whisks her away."

"A regular Calgon moment," said Hadley. "Take me away!"

"Stop jokin', Hadley. I'm trying to tell you a story here."

"Sorry."

"Anyway, she hops in the car with her bank-robber-boyfriend, and they drive off into the sunset. They're on the lam, see. The law is on their tails. They gotta find a place to lay low. Wait for the heat to die down."

"I can see where they'd be in a lot of trouble."

"They hide out here. Right here! Can you believe it? And from what I've read, Melrick, the robber, was not going to go quietly into that good night. No, sir. He told Kate he'd never spend a day in prison. He swore they'd never take him alive. He was gunned down not far from here, and Kate was never seen again. Poof! Vanished. Disappears into thin air."

"Alien abduction?"

Lou Edna popped Hadley one hard on the arm.

"Ow! That hurts like the dickens, Lou! If you don't stop doing that, I'm going to have you arrested for elder abuse."

"Elder abuse, my crossed, beady eyes!" said Lou Edna. "You are just a little older than me, Hadley Jane Pell. And there ain't no way you can even begin to describe yourself as no ancient, grizzled, over-the-hill, past-your-prime, long-in-the-tooth, or fossil. If that's the case, then, so am I! Which it's not, by the way."

"You've obviously been giving this a lot of thought," said Hadley.

"About the missing girl?"

"No about adjectives that describe aging. Ow!"

"What are you two conspiring about over there?" Maury asked.

"We woke you up from your nap," said Lou Edna. "Sorry that your sister is such a wimp."

Hadley shot Lou Edna the evil eye.

"Well, Sleeping Beauty," said Hadley, "how was your snooze?"

"Wonderful," said Maury. "I feel so refreshed."

Hadley fingered the side of her mouth.

"I took a nap, too," she said. "But I woke up feeling like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Gosh, I hope I don't develop a cold sore from all that gunk I managed to leak from my mouth."

"Ugh," said Maury. "I don't want to think about it."

"Me neither. Lou Edna is filling me in on the lost girl of Kyrk's Ridge," said Hadley. "You know, the story about the girl that came here years ago and vanished."

Knock! Knock! Knock! The noise was insistent.

"Looks like we got company," said Lou Edna.

"I wonder who in the world it could be?" said Hadley.